After Christchurch shooting, Australia doubles down on being stampeded into catastrophically stupid tech laws

Australia leads "developed democracies" in the adoption of poorly thought-through, dangerous tech laws, thanks to its ban on working cryptography, rushed through in late 2018; now, with no debate or consultation, the Australian Parliament has passed a law that gives tech companies one hour to remove "violent materials" from their platforms with penalties for noncompliance of up to 10% of annual global turnover.

The law was rushed through in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings, after which the platforms completely failed to enforce their own policies, allowing millions of reposts of the footage streamed by the killer. This is part of a culture of negligence and willful blindness by the platforms, whose unwillingness to confront these matters is the stuff of legend and set them up for this outcome.

But if we think the platforms suck at moderation now, just wait until they can lose 10% of gross revenues for not having a sufficiently itchy trigger finger when it comes to censorship. We've already seen how platforms routinely block and censor the victims of crimes who are seeking justice. We've also seen that trolls are happy to expend the time and energy needed to master the policies of platforms and skate right up to them, while goading their opponents into crossing them so they can get them censored.

The EU was hoping to pass nearly identical legislation but failed to do so in the last Parliament, largely because its focus shifted to mandatory copyright filters, but the passage of the Australian law is sure to influence the European debate after May's EU elections. Read the rest